XV.
As we gradually approach [the period of] the revocation, the ordinances already so numerous, as we have seen, multiplied with striking features of aggravation. We will class the most important under distinct heads.
Public Offices.—The exclusions were extended by degrees to all employments without exception. The Reformed were disabled from being councillors, judges, assessors, treasurers, clerks in the financial departments, consuls, municipal magistrates, advocates, notaries, procurators, serjeants, ushers, physicians, apothecaries, librarians, printers, employés in the post [offices], and public conveyances, members of corporations, &c. &c. Even midwives of the religion were no longer permitted, “because they did not believe,” said the ordinance of 1680, “baptism to be necessary, and could not christen children on emergency.”
In certain cantons it was physically impossible to execute these edicts; for how could the Reformed be excluded from all employments and every office in those places where they formed nearly the whole of the population? It was necessary to select consuls and municipal councillors from adventurers living in the suburbs, and from people of no character, which caused inexpressible disorder.
Civil Rights.—There were no longer any guarantees in the courts of justice. The chambers of the Edict, at Paris and Rouen, had been abolished in 1669. The mixed chambers of the Parliaments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux were abolished in 1679; “seeing,” said the preamble, “that all animosity was extinct!” Derision was added to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes!
It was not an unfrequent occurrence to hear the (Roman) Catholic party invoke this argument, in affairs purely civil: “I plead against a heretic;” and when a member of the Reformed faith complained of an unjust sentence, he was coolly answered: “You have your remedy in your hands; why do you not become a Catholic?”
Marriage and Paternal Authority.—Alliances were no longer permitted between the Reformed and (Roman) Catholics, even in the case of former relations that marriage had legitimized. The Reformed were not allowed to have (Roman) Catholic valets, for fear the latter should be seduced; and soon, by an inverse excess, they were prohibited from having any other than (Roman) Catholics, because such could be employed as spies. The nearest relations were prohibited from being guardians or curators. Fathers and mothers were forbidden to send their children into foreign countries before the age of sixteen. It was ordered that all illegitimate children, of every age and condition, should be held as (Roman) Catholics, and educated in that religion: and as this ordinance was made to act retrospectively, results flowed from it as ridiculous as they were odious. Persons of sixty and eighty years of age were summoned to enter the church of Rome, because their illegitimate condition had legally rendered them (Roman) Catholics.
Matters even went further than this. An edict of the 17th of June, 1681, declared that the children of the Reformed might abjure at the age of seven. “We will, and it pleaseth us,” said the ordinance, “that our said subjects of the pretended Reformed religion, as well male as female, having attained the age of seven years, may, and it shall be lawful for them to, embrace the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and, for this end, that they be received to make abjuration, without their fathers and mothers and other relatives offering the least impediment, under any pretext whatsoever!” These children were free to withdraw themselves whenever they liked, and the parents were bound to provide them with a pension for their maintenance.
Fearful consequences attended [the passing of] this law. Every family was disturbed. Friends, (Roman) Catholic neighbours, servants, the slightest mark of kindness to their children on the part of a stranger, were mistrusted. A priest, an envious acquaintance, an enemy, a discontented talebearer, might declare before a justice that such and such a child had made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, or desired to enter a (Roman) Catholic church; and this was often sufficient to justify their abduction, particularly of those who were rich enough to pay an allowance, and to shut them up in some convent under the direction of monks, nuns, and the [secular] clergy.
Even Madame Maintenon made use of this abominable law. Having vainly endeavoured to convert her relation, the Marquis de Villette, who had replied to her: “It would take me a hundred years to believe in infallibility, twenty years to believe in the real presence,” and so on, she deprived him of his children; among others of a little girl, who afterwards became the Marchioness de Caylus. We read in the Memoirs of this lady: “I cried a great deal, but I found next day the royal mass so beautiful that I consented to be a (Roman) Catholic, on condition that I should hear it every day, and that I should be insured from all whipping. This was all the controversy employed, and the only abjuration I made.”
Contracts and Imposts.—The newly-converted were permitted to delay the payment of their debts for the space of three years, which attracted all involved or dishonest debtors to (Roman) Catholicism. These same converts were also exempt for two years from imposts and military quarterings; while a double imposition of billets, taxes, or arbitrary contributions, called office taxes, were inflicted upon the refractory, so that the treasury might not suffer by its liberality. Colbert complained in vain of the disorder and confusion which this caused; religion, however, took the precedence of financial regularity.
Attacks upon Property.—All the funds, rents, and other property of every kind which belonged to the condemned churches, were confiscated in favour of the (Roman) Catholic hospitals: so likewise were all those destined to the poor of the religion, even in the places where its exercise had not been interdicted; and testamentary dispositions containing charitable legacies for the consistories were annulled. We shall see, as we proceed, to what point the attack upon private property was (also) carried.
Liberty of Conscience and of Worship.—Physicians, surgeons, and others, who should assist the sick of the Reformed religion, were commanded to give notice thereof to the magistrates of the locality, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres; and the latter—consuls, judges, or magistrates—were required to visit the sick, willingly or by force, with or without a priest, to ask them if they would abjure.
The pastors were forbidden to speak of the misfortune of the times in their sermons, to attack the Romish church directly or indirectly, to reside at a distance of less than six leagues from the places of interdicted worship, and of less than three leagues from the places of contested worship. The people were forbidden to assemble in their places of worship under pretence of prayer and singing psalms, except at the usual hours. The conferences were definitively interdicted; and the consistories were obliged to admit a (Roman) Catholic commissioner. It was prohibited to contribute alms for the maintenance of the sick of the Reformed religion, or to take care of them in private houses; the order was to transfer them to the hospitals, where they fell under the action of Roman proselytism.
The crowning measure of oppression was the prohibition to receive any new converts in the places of worship, under pain of banishment and forfeiture of property, as regarded the pastors, and of privation of religious exercises, as regarded the flocks. At this last blow the Reformed were ready to abandon themselves to despair. Many deliberated whether they ought not to renounce all public service, and confine themselves to the adoration of God within their own houses. What refinement of barbarity! To force them themselves to watch the door of their places of worship, and to drive away the brethren, who had doubtless quitted them, but who returned perhaps with tears of repentance! Besides, by what signs was a new convert distinguished? How was it possible to know all those who had abjured? Might not one traitor procure the condemnation of an entire church? The places of worship at Bergerac, Montpellier, Saint Quentin, and Montauban, were demolished in this way: the same fate threatened all the others.
It appeared as if the condition of the Reformed could not become worse. It did so, however, by the intervention of the Marquis de Louvois, who wanted, according to the expression of Madame de Caylus, to mix up the soldiery with the affair. He was annoyed that he was, after the peace of Nimeguen, no longer necessary to his master, and saw with displeasure devotion replacing gallantry in the heart of Louis. He tried long and fruitlessly to bring the king back to Madame de Montespan; but when he was convinced that his intrigues were useless, and that the sole means of pleasing Louis was to second his efforts for the conversion of the Huguenots, he entered into them with all the violence of his character, being only too happy to play the first part with the help of the troops at his disposal. What miseries, what shameful calculations in that court, so renowned, and all under the mask of Catholic piety!
Louvois wrote to Marillac, intendant at Poitou, in the month of March, 1681, that he was about to send a regiment of horse into that province. “His majesty,” he said, “has heard with much joy of the great number of persons, who continue to be converted in your department. He wishes you to persist in your endeavours, and desires that the greater number of horsemen and officers should be billeted upon the Protestants. If, according to a just distribution, ten would be quartered upon the members of the Reformed religion, you may order them to accommodate twenty.” Louvois also enjoined that the communication of his orders should be made to the mayors and authorities, not by writing, but by word of mouth, so that it might not be said that the king used violence towards the Huguenots.
Such was the origin of those dragonnades, which have left an indelible stain of disgrace upon the reign of Louis XIV., and of horror in the mind of the inhabitants. The march of Marillac’s troops was ordered, as if they were in an enemy’s country, exacting arrears of taxes, exempting those who became converts, and throwing all the burden upon the obstinate. From four to ten dragoons were billeted in the houses, with directions not to kill the inhabitants, but with authority to do anything short of that, in order to extort an abjuration. Curates followed the soldiers in the towns and villages, shouting: “Courage, gentlemen, it is the will of the king.”
Without a check upon their passions, the military committed horrible excesses: a horde of brigands had penetrated into the heart of the kingdom. The Journal of Jean Migault, published in these later times, will give an idea of their barbarities. Devastations, pillages, tortures, cruelties [prevailed; in fact,] they hesitated at nothing.
Elie Bénoit has filled page after page of his History of the Edict of Nantes [with a narrative of these cruelties]; we will only extract one or two passages: “The horsemen,” he writes, “fastened crosses to the mouth of their musquetoons to compel the people to kiss them by force, and when they met with any resistance, they thrust their crosses into the face and stomach of their unhappy victims. They spared children as little as persons of more advanced age, and without the slightest regard for their years; they loaded them with blows with the flat of their swords, or with the butt-end of their musquetoons; such was their violence that in many instances many were crippled for life. These infamous wretches took a pleasure in maltreating women. They beat them with whips; they struck them in the face with canes in order to disfigure them; they dragged them by their hair in the mud and over the stones. Sometimes the soldiers, meeting labourers on the road, or with their carts, drove them to the (Roman) Catholic churches, pricking them like cattle with their own spurs, to hasten their unwilling march....”[90]
Crowds of unfortunates fled to the woods; others hid themselves in the houses of their friends; many determined to fly the kingdom at all hazards; and there might be seen men, women, and children, half-dead, stretched upon the stones or rugged rocks. Many at length consented to abjure under the sabre of the soldier; but what an abjuration! Numbers went mad, or died of grief, or put an end to their days in paroxysms of remorse and despair. There were some who, flinging themselves upon the road, beat their breasts and filled the air with wailings. “When any two of these unfortunate converts met,” still further relates Bénoit, “when one beheld the other at the foot of an image, or in any other act of Catholic devotion, their cries redoubled, and their grief burst out anew. The labourer, abandoned to his reflections during his work, felt the sharp stimulus of remorse, and quitting his waggon in the midst of his fields, threw himself upon his knees, and while prostrate on the earth, sought for pardon, and took all nature to witness that it was violence alone that he had obeyed.”[91]
Madame de Maintenon wrote to her brother, who was about to receive a gratuity of eight hundred thousand francs: “I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou.” (September 2nd, 1681.)
The emigration, suspended in 1669, recommenced upon a vaster scale, and thousands of families quitted France. The Protestant countries, England, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, offered them shelter by official declarations. The court became alarmed, above all when the heads of the administration of the navy complained of the desertion of a great number of sailors, who, having readier means of flight, escaped en masse. Marillac was recalled, and the other intendants received orders to act with less severity.
The ordinances, which interdicted departure from the kingdom, were again put in force, with the addition of the penalty of perpetual imprisonment at the galleys against the heads of families, a fine of three thousand livres for those who should encourage them to fly, and the nullification of all contracts of sale made by the Reformed one year before their emigration. This last article overturned all private transactions, and it became necessary to supply a remedy on its execution.
The laws against emigrants and those who relapsed, placed a double-edged sword in the hands of the persecutors. If the new converts re-entered a place of worship, they were stricken with a terrible punishment, and they were equally so if they endeavoured to quit the kingdom. The government would consider them only as (Roman) Catholics in France; on the frontier they were seized as heretics. Rulhières, always led by a desire to justify the memory of Louis XIV., says that “the misfortunes of the Reformed were principally due to the combination of these two laws, of which their originator, Father La Chaise, boasted, as master-pieces of genius.”
The assembly of the clergy, who had to secure the pardon of the Roman See for the temerity of the four propositions of 1682, sent a pastoral notice to all the consistories of France, in which it was said that the bishops looked upon the Huguenots as strayed sheep, and would welcome them with open arms, but that they would be discharged from the care of their souls, if the heretics were not convinced by these charitable words. “This last error,” the prelates wrote, “will be more criminal in you than all the others, and you must expect misfortunes incomparably more dreadful and disastrous than all those your revolt and schism have drawn upon you at present.”
This notice of the clergy was read in the consistories by the express command of the king. It converted nobody; but every one foresaw fresh sufferings; for those who uttered the prediction had influence enough to work its accomplishment.